Trump’s 2019 Budget Request

February 15, 2018

On Feb. 12, President Donald Trump released his fiscal 2019 budget request, as well as an addendum reflecting the recently enacted two-year budget deal, H.R. 1892.

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (H.R. 1892) cleared the Senate on Feb. 9 by a vote of 73-26 and was approved in the House just a few hours later by a vote of 240-186. President Trump quickly signed the budget agreement into law, spurred on by the fact that parts of the government were forced to temporarily shut down due to a lapse in funding that started at midnight on Feb. 8. The two-year agreement sets top-line defense and non-defense spending levels for two years, extends dozens of expired temporary tax provisions, provides tax relief for victims of last fall’s natural disasters, and tweaks certain provisions in the tax reform legislation that was enacted at the end of 2017. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the tax provisions will reduce federal receipts by nearly $17.5 billion between 2018 and 2027.

For FY2019, President Trump sent Congress a $4.4 trillion budget with steep cuts–$3.6 trillion—in domestic programs and entitlements, including Medicare, and large increases for the military, envisioning deficits totaling at least $7.1 trillion over the next decade. Unlike previous Republican budgets, the Trump administration, this year, does not attempt to balance the federal budget over 10 years.

President Trump’s budget proposal provides for $716 billion in spending on military programs. It includes $200 billion for rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and outlays $23 billion for border security—most of it for the building of a wall on the border with Mexico to prevent illegal immigration. The budget request also provides for $200 billion in federal funds intended to spur $1.5 trillion in infrastructure investments with state, local and private partners over the next 10 years.

For the Small Business Administration (SBA), the budget requests $834 million in new budget authority for 2019, a $53 million or 5.9-percent decrease from the 2017 enacted level. The budget supports $43 billion in business loans that would help America’s small-business owners access affordable capital to start or expand their businesses. Further, the budget requests $110 million for the Small Business Development Center program, which delivers a variety of services to small businesses and prospective business owners across U.S. cities and counties. Additionally, it requests $9.1 million for SBA’s Office of Advocacy and $21.9 million for SBA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to provide auditing and investigative services to support and assist SBA in achieving its mission.

The budget request assumes more than $1 trillion in savings will come from repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), overhauling welfare programs, limiting federal financial aid, and other cutbacks. The budget also assumes that recently enacted policy, largely the tax law, will spur $814 billion in new growth. However, even with those sharp spending cuts and economic projections, the federal government would still have a $445 billion deficit by the end of the decade.